MEET THE MODDERS MISTAHNICEGUY

Intel recently hosted their annual LANFest at their campus in Sacramento, and David “MistahNiceGuy” Cambra’s custom build stood out from the crowd with an awesome ode to the San Francisco 49ers.

What inspired your build? My cousin had a San Jose Sharks build he did last time and that kind of inspired me and he helped me out with it quite a bit. Of course being a 49ers fan, born and raised, I just thought it would be the perfect combo. Then I had to do it one step further than his. I have a lot more pieces painted in my build than his, I believe.

What are the keys to custom painting a build? Sand it down, primer it, a couple coats, and we were doing this in the heat of the Sacramento Summer so that was causing issues. It wasn’t drying evenly, it was causing some cracking, there was a lot of resanding, repainting. It was a painstaking process, but it was definitely worth it.

What was the hardest part of the build? The initial sanding. We started Saturday morning and we were still going as the sun was going down. My hands were killing me, my forearms were killing me. For some parts we had a belt sander, that worked well, but when you get inside the case there’s a lot of nooks and crannies that you have to dig in for.

Are there any parts of the build you’re particularly proud of? It’s all the small pieces, especially on the motherboard, there were a few white plastic pieces that were just really clashing. When I first did it, it was basically just the case I had painted, just the red and various case pieces a gold and my hardware was left alone. I looked at it and I really wanted to go that extra step so I had to take my computer apart again.

For the motherboard I had to unscrew a couple pieces you typically don’t ever touch when you’re building a computer, so that was a little nerve wracking. I didn’t know exactly what I was working with, uncovering little pieces that I’d never had to see before. Especially because I had already spent so much on my hardware. I wouldn’t say top of the line, but definitely high-end enthusiast. Like in order to paint the GPU I’m voiding my warranty by taking the back plating off.

It’s definitely worth it though, the way it turned out I couldn’t be more proud of it. It’s something I worked hard for and I’ve had multiple people come up and compliment me on it and it’s awesome, it’s more than I could ask for.

I’m pretty happy with my power supply cover, it says “Since Day 1 Faithful” which is pretty nice to have there. I bought a couple pieces of acrylic, basically glued them together at a ninety degree angle, painted the backside gold then put the stencil on the front side, the top part, and painted that red and then pulled the stencil off so the gold shows through the red like that. I also did it in the upper right corner that covers the disc drive, I have a little SF logo.

What games do you like to run on it?Cuphead’s been fun right now, it’s a great game, it brings me back to Nintendo level difficulty. We’ll spend 10 deaths or more on a single boss, but once you’ve finally defeated it, it’s that much more enjoyable. Aside from that I mainly play Rocket League, a little PUBG here and there. When no one’s on I usually hope on some Path of Exile, I’ve gotten into that recently. I’ve been playing Diablo 3 since it came out, every season, and it’s been kind of the same old thing. I got bored of that so I decided to finally try Path of Exile and the game is blowing me away, it’s a lot of fun.

Do you have any ideas for this or a different build in the future? I’m still a little nervous to, but I do want to get a custom water loop, I think that’d be the ultimate next step. But it’s difficult to start thinking about upgrades because then if I want to get a 1080 Ti instead of just my 1080 am I going to take that back plating off, paint it and void that warranty too?

For instance I had almost everything finished and I decided to replace my power supply. I first built this computer maybe six or 7 years ago, it was a lot weaker system and over time I’ve upgraded it part by part, and my power supply was the oldest piece of hardware, but then it was incomplete for a while because I needed to paint it gold so it wasn’t just black and clashing with everything else.